Saturday, 11 February 2017

Of Of Woe or: How do we manage these song structures, really

We are not ones to write straight verse/chorus/verse material, and if you've listened to our songs, you know that already. This time it's time for one of the most progressive song structures on the album and the penultimate part in our behind the scenes series.

Lenore

Otto: This is definitely one of the most impressive things we've done.
Mainly this song is based on a structure by Henri, which the rest of the band
fleshed out.

Lenore really includes some of my favorite moments of the album. The part
about two and half minutes in, where we use some odd time signatures, rhythms,
syncopation and whatnot, was great already in its original form (and it beats
the hell out of me how Henri ever came up with it!), but once Niko started
playing a small part of it with a laid-back back beat groove, it transcended to
being just simply awesome. Furthermore, how this part ends with an extended
drum fill going well past the bar the riff ends up with was originally an
accident: Niko never got the hang of it how the riff ended and when the next
riff started, so he always started to play this extended drum fill towards the end
of the riff in order to catch us up once the next one started!

Henri: I named the aforementioned part “the winner riff” when writing the
song. It was years ago, so I’m not exactly sure why, but it might’ve had to do
with the feeling I got from the riff, like “Yeah, I’m a winner! Huh!”

Thematically sort of related to Coeur, musically also follows the
philosophy of “go anywhere, return if you feel like it”, although decidedly
less of a quilt composition. At some point in time I realized we are pretty
progressive with our song structures. And hey, that works for us. Also, I
remember the first time we played this song live and when the 5/4 outro kicked
in I saw a couple pairs of eyes brighten in the audience along with an audible
“OOOOOHHHH!”

Otto: I'm not surprised by
their reactions; after all I, too, find the outro of the song really great.
That 5/4 melody seems to flow with remarkable ease despite the odd time
signature and our album version just gets better once the acoustic guitars kick
in. I really love that folky atmosphere of the outro when two acoustic guitars
play the lead melody an octave apart while a 12-string acoustic guitar keeps up
the harmony backdrop intact with its almost mandolin-like sound.

Of Woe or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Gloom is out now on our Bandcamp page as well as Spotify, Google Play, iTunes etc.